Chuck,
Thanks. You just reminded me that the government gave us the Internet
too. From Wikipedia -
The origins of the Internet reach back to the
1960s when the United States funded research projects of its military
agencies to build robust, fault-tolerant and distributed computer
networks. This research and a period of civilian funding of a new U.S. backbone by the National Science Foundation
spawned worldwide participation in the development of new networking
technologies and led to the commercialization of an international
network in the mid 1990s, and resulted in the following popularization
of countless applications in virtually every aspect of modern human
life. As of 2009, an estimated quarter of Earth's population uses the
services of the Internet.
jack
Chuck Bartosch wrote:
On Mar 16, 2010, at 2:27 AM, MDK wrote:
Government "Gave" me my life? Really?
Telephone? Until we got the government out of it, it was horrendously
expensive and advanced none at all.
That isn't really true Mark. Before the government got involved you had multiple non-interworking telephone systems. I remember my grandfather telling me when I was young that people had to have a "red telephone" and a "blue telephone" in Minneapolis where we grew up for the two phone companies if you wanted to be able to call everyone with a phone. Talk about horrendously expensive (and not just in cost, but in time). Government forced a monopoly situation that for many many decades worked to our advantage. Eventually that was broken up when it no longer served the public's interest.
I also remember that friends who travelled around the world coming back always commenting about how much more advanced and how much more reliable our telecom systems were than anyone else's.
And no advances? Geeze, when I was a kid everyone I knew had party lines. Not long before that you had operators connecting calls. There were a LOT of advances given the core technology that was available.
It is hard to see just what kind of other advances you could have had in the 30's, 40's, 50's and early 60's. The internet wasn't possible back then because home computers didn't exist and the protocols that allowed it to emerge didn't exist.
It wasn't until the later 60's that transistors really became viable and allowed a lot of the dynamic advances that breaking the monopoly enabled. Yes, it took a decade or two to undo the the regulatory environment that by that point WAS holding back progress, but I respectfully submit that doing it decades earlier than that would have had no particular beneficial effect and the original intervention was hugely beneficial.
Reflexively painting everything government does as bad is simplistic though has the benefit that it doesn't take a lot of thought. But it's a disservice to your own arguments and restricts your ability to influence debate and the position of others. It might be more useful to take a more balanced view that more accurately reflects reality.
Chuck
Now, we have services that WERE NOT
EVEN CONCEIVABLE to me the year I got married. We've come that far since
then.
Copper to my house? Obsolete.
Long distance? I haven't paid that in years. All it took was someone
with a big enough club to force government to undo what it did "for" us.
It could be so cheap and so competitive the cost would be trivial, but no,
the pointy headed trolls in DC have to "give" us stuff.
You know what? I lived for years far beyond the end of the power and phone
lines. Guess what? No big loss. If we'd not subsidized bad ideas for
so long, real innovation would have started LONG LONG LONG ago, to solve
problems with real solutions, instead of cementing the past into stone with
"good intentions".
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Neofast, Inc, Making internet easy
541-969-8200 509-386-4589
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
--------------------------------------------------
From: "Philip Dorr" <wirel...@judgementgaming.com>
Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 11:02 PM
To: "WISPA General List" <wireless@wispa.org>
Subject: Re: [WISPA] Here comes the really BIG WAVE
Your life? Telephone? Rural Utilities?
On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 11:31 PM, Glenn Kelley <gl...@hostmedic.com>
wrote:
can you name me one thing that the government has given that it has
not first taken?
funny I keep asking - but never given an answer.
Im with you MDK
On Mar 16, 2010, at 1:20 AM, MDK wrote:
The really big wave of mass stupidity.
I can't imagine how ANYONE would want Congress's or the FCC's
fingers on
ANYTHING. There is only ONE way to ensure that things get more
expensive,
cost us terribly, and work worse... and that's to put the people who
know
absolutely NOTHING about real life in charge.... Washington DC.
Please name for me anything that Washington DC has done for us, that
is not
a disaster of Biblical proportions. You can't. Absolutely
everything
they try to do "for" us is so horrible it's beyond insane.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Neofast, Inc, Making internet easy
541-969-8200 509-386-4589
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
--------------------------------------------------
From: "Jack Unger" <jun...@ask-wi.com>
Sent: Saturday, March 13, 2010 9:26 AM
To: "WISPA General List" <wireless@wispa.org>; <memb...@wispa.org>
Subject: [WISPA] Here comes the really BIG WAVE
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/business/media/13fcc.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1268486085-Jt93CAOuKUSJEQR/ZmVkzg
--
Jack Unger - President, Ask-Wi.Com, Inc.
Network Design - Technical Training - Technical Writing
Serving the Broadband Wireless, Networking and Telecom Communities
since
1993
www.ask-wi.com 818-227-4220 jun...@ask-wi.com
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Chuck Bartosch
Clarity Connect, Inc.
200 Pleasant Grove Road
Ithaca, NY 14850
(607) 257-8268
"When the stars threw down their spears,
and water'd heaven with their tears,
Did He smile, His work to see?
Did He who made the Lamb make thee?"
>From William Blake's Tiger!, Tiger!
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Jack Unger - President, Ask-Wi.Com, Inc.
Network Design - Technical Training - Technical Writing
Serving the Broadband Wireless, Networking and Telecom Communities since 1993
www.ask-wi.com 818-227-4220 jun...@ask-wi.com
|
